Review Reset_Tears 2/5 · Dec 12, 2020
Cycle Paths
(This was retro game club game #8 on the Grouvee forum.)
Uniracers (or Unirally) is delightfully silly and surreal nonsense. You race as an unmanned unicycle on floating tube tracks, doing flips and spins whenever you launch into the air. Landing successfully after doing a trick will give you a small boost of speed and hopefully keep you ahead of …
(This was retro game club game #8 on the Grouvee forum.)
Uniracers (or Unirally) is delightfully silly and surreal nonsense. You race as an unmanned unicycle on floating tube tracks, doing flips and spins whenever you launch into the air. Landing successfully after doing a trick will give you a small boost of speed and hopefully keep you ahead of your opponent (either a 2nd player, or the computer).
But while the weird premise is sound and the unicycles themselves control well enough, I can't quite call this a good game. The biggest issue is that you can't see far enough ahead of your unicycle to react in time to anything. A modern game I'll go ahead and compare this one to is Speedrunners. Modern games of course have a larger retail space to work with, but Speedrunners also has things zoomed out enough that you can see plenty of the map and its upcoming obstacles, allowing you to plan ahead (and still race at breakneck speeds). In Uniracers, you just have to memorize the courses full-stop.
I think the game can be a hoot with a friend for a bit, since it's so silly. But if playing alone it'll get tiring much more quickly. The general presentation in Uniracers is not appealing, with its selection of annoying sound and visual effects. All in all this one's a wonky game with a steep learning curve, and I'd probably rather just play Super Mario Kart or Excitebike.